1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a three-dimensional object display apparatus, three-dimensional object switching display method, three-dimensional object display program and graphical user interface, and, for example, is preferably utilized to display a plurality of thumbnail images, which are equivalent to a plurality of multimedia files (moving picture files, for example), in an easy-to-see manner to users.
2. Description of Related Art
Multimedia file browsers, such as “iPhoto (Apple Computer, Inc.),” “ACDSee (ACD Systems),” and “Picasa (Google)”, have a display mode switching function to sort a lot of photos and multimedia files by category or by date and time and then to display them.
Those multimedia file browsers place a plurality of thumbnail images side-by-side on a two-dimensional surface. Accordingly, the number of thumbnail images to be displayed is dependent upon the size of the two-dimensional surface. Therefore, it is physically difficult to place all the thumbnail images in one screen.
One way to deal with that is to use a three-dimensional figure such as a polygonal column. In this case, images are laid out to each side of the polygonal column which then rotates around a central axis on a display (see Jpn. Pat. Appln. Laid-open Publication No. 2002-82745, for example).